André Wink is an
emeritus professor
''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus".
In some c ...
of history at
University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is known for his studies on
India
India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
and the
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or approximately 20% of the water area of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia (continent), ...
area, particularly over the
medieval
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...
and
early modern
The early modern period is a Periodization, historical period that is defined either as part of or as immediately preceding the modern period, with divisions based primarily on the history of Europe and the broader concept of modernity. There i ...
age (700 to 1800 CE). He is the author of a series of books published by
Brill Academic,
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, and
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...
on ''
al-Hind'' – a term used in
Arab history to refer to the
Islamized
The spread of Islam spans almost 1,400 years. The early Muslim conquests that occurred following the death of Muhammad in 632 CE led to the creation of the caliphates, expanding over a vast geographical area; conversion to Islam was boosted ...
regions in the Indian subcontinent and nearby regions.
Wink was born in 1953, in
Hollandia,
Netherlands New Guinea
Dutch New Guinea or Netherlands New Guinea (, ) was the Western New Guinea, western half of the island of New Guinea that was a part of the Dutch East Indies until 1949, later an overseas administrative territorial entity, overseas territory of ...
(present day
Jayapura
Jayapura (formerly Hollandia (1910-1962), Kota Baru (1962-1963), Soekarnopura (1963-1968)) is the capital city, capital and List of Indonesian cities by population, largest city of the Indonesian Provinces of Indonesia, province of Papua (provi ...
,
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...
). He studied at
Leiden University
Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; ) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. Established in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince of Orange as a Protestantism, Protestant institution, it holds the d ...
, and in 1984, he received a
Ph.D. in Indian history under the guidance of
Indologist J.C. Heesterman. Until 1990, he researched and published from the
Netherlands
, Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...
. He became a professor at the University of Wisconsin in 1989, from where he has contributed ever since to the field of history of India, Indonesia and countries near the Indian Ocean. He became a senior fellow in 2009.
Works
''Land and Sovereignty: Agrarian Society and Politics under the Eighteenth-Century Maratha Svarajya''
In 1986, Wink published a socioeconomic history of the Marathas in eighteenth century. Reviews were largely favorable and his revisionist approach was admired.
''Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World''
Volume 1
Indologist Catherine Asher calls it a "ground-breaking volume" that is based on recent scholarship as well as the "contemporary
Arab
Arabs (, , ; , , ) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world.
Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years ...
,
Persian,
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
and Indian vernacular texts".
Wink examines the "political, economic and social" impact on the Indian subcontinent between seventh and eleventh centuries from the conquests and expansion of Islam.
His central thesis on the economic impact of Islam dispelled many commonly held dogmas on demonetization theory, and underlined the errors in "drawing parallels between contemporary Europe and India".
She concludes that any book of such sweep was bound to have critics but the shortcomings were minor enough to render the study as remarkable and pivotal.
Bruce B. Lawrence – a scholar of
religious studies
Religious studies, also known as religiology or the study of religion, is the study of religion from a historical or scientific perspective. There is no consensus on what qualifies as ''religion'' and definition of religion, its definition is h ...
, states Wink's scope is "ambitious, even monumental", but volume 1 of "al-Hind is seriously flawed by its too narrow focus, its author's near total disregard of cultural actors, issues, and influences".
Lawrence questions Wink's glossing over India's past political history to make his economic and trade theory related point that there was "no cohesive entity labelled India before Arabs coined the word al-Hind". His discussion of the economic impact of early Islamic expansion into India relies primarily on a region consisting of the
Gurjara-Pratiharas, the
Rashtrakutas
The Rashtrakuta Empire was a royal Indian polity ruling large parts of the Indian subcontinent between the 6th and 10th centuries. The earliest known Rashtrakuta Indian inscriptions, inscription is a 7th-century copper plate grant detailing th ...
, the
Cola-mandalam and the Asian
archipelago
An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands. An archipelago may be in an ocean, a sea, or a smaller body of water. Example archipelagos include the Aegean Islands (the o ...
, with only two –
Kashmir
Kashmir ( or ) is the Northwestern Indian subcontinent, northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term ''Kashmir'' denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir P ...
and
Bengal
Bengal ( ) is a Historical geography, historical geographical, ethnolinguistic and cultural term referring to a region in the Eastern South Asia, eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. The region of Benga ...
– covered from the rest of India. Some of his conclusions on
Tibet
Tibet (; ''Böd''; ), or Greater Tibet, is a region in the western part of East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are other ethnic groups s ...
and
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
are scarcely discussed in the book. The major blunder of Wink's volume 1, states Lawrence, is to "reduce the entire process of Islamization to an expanding commercial network, with the result that Islam becomes merely the idiom for unifying the economy of the Indian Ocean at the beginning of the second millennium AD."
Wink's Volume 1 is blind to cultural history of institutional Islam, where he reduces Islamization to an "idiom of trade" in trans-Asian scale rather than the necessary broader view of its "religious or juridical or political significance". The book is a reprieve from small scale histories that characterizes South Asian historiography, but a better study would integrate insights of historians such as Derryl MacLean, remarks Lawrence.
Historian Derryl N. Maclean, who published ''Religion and society in Arab Sind'' in 1984, noted Wink's first volume focuses on the initial expansion of Muslims into the East and their economic activities at the frontiers.
Wink sketched Sind as an "economically and culturally marginal" territory dominated by rebellions, a view supported more to colonial historians than
primary source
In the study of history as an academic discipline, a primary source (also called an original source) is an Artifact (archaeology), artifact, document, diary, manuscript, autobiography, recording, or any other source of information that was cre ...
s. The chapter on non-Arab India provided "welcome glimmers of insight" and did "break some new ground" by challenging R.S. Sharma's thesis of feudalism. However, states MacLean, Wink's work exhibited signs of "hasty research and composition" affecting his larger conjectures and portrayed a reductive, unsubtle and "ahistorical
caricature
A caricature is a rendered image showing the features of its subject in a simplified or exaggerated way through sketching, pencil strokes, or other artistic drawings (compare to: cartoon). Caricatures can be either insulting or complimentary, ...
" of a complex Indo-Islamic past.
Maclean criticized his "the cavalier manner with unattributed quotes from primary sources", "numerous broad and unsupported statements", "quasi-
orientalist musings" and "chaotic transliterations" some of which are "clearly misreadings".
MacLean's more serious concern with Wink's volume 1 is the tendency therein to make Islam and Hinduism more real than the abstraction they are. In Wink's approach, "Islam becomes a rubric for an economic complex", states MacLean.
Historian
Peter Jackson
Sir Peter Robert Jackson (born 31 October 1961) is a New Zealand filmmaker. He is best known as the director, writer, and producer of the ''Lord of the Rings'' trilogy (2001–2003) and the ''Hobbit'' trilogy (2012–2014), both of which ar ...
states Wink's volume 1 deals with India and entire Indian Ocean basin just like the Arabic-Persian term "Hind embraced a far wider area than the subcontinent".
The book is based on a "highly impressive range of secondary literature" as well early literature published in the Middle East. Its central theme is how the formation of the Caliphate and Islamic expansion interconnected with the "development of the India trade". Wink goes beyond the typical rhetoric of
Islamic holy war and Arab politics, vigorously challenging the "notions purveyed by R.S. Sharma" that unconvincingly parallel early India into the mold of
medieval Europe
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...
.
Jackson criticizes Wink's use of a few partially incorrect names, willingness to accept some discredited dates, and some sources such as Chachnama. Nevertheless, states Jackson, Wink's volume 1 overall is "an important and stimulating work which not only distils a considerable body of the most recent scholarship but breaks new ground in the originality of its ideas".
The historian
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, in one of his essays, states Wink's volume 1 "tends to treat both Islam and Muslims in a largely monolithic and undifferentiated fashion and is strikingly reticent both on questions of ideology and on the social and economic competition and conflict between different groups operating in the Indian Ocean".
Denis Sinor
Denis Sinor (born Dénes Zsinór, April 17, 1916 in Kolozsvár (Austria-Hungary, now Cluj-Napoca, Romania) – January 12, 2011 in Bloomington, Indiana) was a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Central Asian Studies at the Department of C ...
states that he fails to detect any other central themes other than the primary importance of trade and admires Wink's "erudition and wide reading".
However, the book was loaded with "far too many data on far too many subjects", and "often overtly verbose and superfluous", striving to fit a vast range of facts into a framework too small to hold them.
Yet, it has its qualities too, offering new insights and data for further research to the few patient readers, states Sinor.
Sunil Kumar, in his review of Wink's first volume, noted the author to "seldom extend beyond a 'cut and paste' methodology" where information was conveniently chosen and discarded from existing secondary scholarship to pursue his broader agenda. K.S. Shrimali reiterates like criticisms and found the work to be
neo-colonialist.
Ranabir Chakravarti, a historian of
ancient India
Anatomically modern humans first arrived on the Indian subcontinent between 73,000 and 55,000 years ago. The earliest known human remains in South Asia date to 30,000 years ago. Sedentism, Sedentariness began in South Asia around 7000 BCE; ...
, express surprise that Wink's discussion on Rashtrakutas were solely based on Arabic chronicles and that he did not cite any kind of
epigraphic
Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the wr ...
records. Viswa Mohan Jha, in his review, deemed it to be an "impossible caricature" replete with references that did not support the text.
Volume 2
In the review of volume 2, states Peter Jackson, Wink's "geographical scope is vast", just like in volume 1.
It embraces not "merely India and
Ceylon
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...
but south-east Asia". This is the period in Wink's analysis where a fusion happened between two different cultures, one "of
maritime trade and
pastoral nomadism" prevalent in the Islamic controlled parts of West and Central Asia, and the settled and "static agricultural world" of India. The
Delhi Sultanate
The Delhi Sultanate or the Sultanate of Delhi was a Medieval India, late medieval empire primarily based in Delhi that stretched over large parts of the Indian subcontinent for more than three centuries. became the crucible for the processes of this fusion. In volume 2 of his series, states Jackson, Wink publishes a dedicated study on the conquest of India by Islamic armies, the military differences between the invading and defending armies, the processes and history of conquest, raids, religious advisors and of early Delhi Sultanate through 1290 CE.
In latter parts of this work, Wink examines the Islamic rule's impact on maritime trade,
indigenous culture,
iconoclasm
Iconoclasm ()From . ''Iconoclasm'' may also be considered as a back-formation from ''iconoclast'' (Greek: εἰκοκλάστης). The corresponding Greek word for iconoclasm is εἰκονοκλασία, ''eikonoklasia''. is the social belie ...
, and
Buddhism
Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...
. It is a "book full of ideas", states Jackson, where Wink demonstrates an "enviable command of the secondary literature on a wide range of topics".
The "scholarship evident in the book commands admiration, even if one disagrees with aspects of his analysis", adds Jackson.
He questions Wink's work on its inadequate discussion of the ''
mamluk
Mamluk or Mamaluk (; (singular), , ''mamālīk'' (plural); translated as "one who is owned", meaning "slave") were non-Arab, ethnically diverse (mostly Turkic, Caucasian, Eastern and Southeastern European) enslaved mercenaries, slave-so ...
'' slave system and imported
slaves from Africa under Delhi Sultanate, treating enslavement to be a "frontier phenomenon" involving
infidel Indians. Wink persuasively treats
Turkish military strengths, yet does not answer the difficult question as to why
Mongols
Mongols are an East Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia, China ( Inner Mongolia and other 11 autonomous territories), as well as the republics of Buryatia and Kalmykia in Russia. The Mongols are the principal member of the large family o ...
failed in establishing themselves in India. Jackson questions the use by Wink, for some of his sections, the seventeenth-century compiled work of the sometimes dubious
Firishta, while acknowledging that there is a dearth of corroborating sources from this period.
These are the parts in Wink's book, critiques Jackson, where one finds misspelled and unrecognizable place names, and some minor factual errors, in the manner similar to Firishta's work. Jackson lists a series of such "irritating distractions" and "slips" as he calls them, then adds Wink's volume 2 is "otherwise splendid" and "much needed" scholarship to place Indian history in the global context and to understand the Indo-Islamic world.
Gavin Hambly found it to be an authoritative work of "consummate scholarship and intellectual distinction" on the Islamic spans of India; the parts on Delhi Sultanate were given "an entirely fresh perspective" and overall, the volume exhibited "deep learning, leisured pace, and sound judgment" doing justice to Wink's wide-ranging approach.
Richard Eaton states, "like its predecessor, this volume is wide-ranging, extensively researched and highly schematic". He mentions Wink's central thesis on the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate as a part of larger geo-cultural movement, that the attacks and wars during this period had a major role in essentially ending Buddhism within India, and its shift to Tibet, Sri Lanka and southeast Asia. Wink's work, states Eaton, also argues how the
Delhi Sultanate
The Delhi Sultanate or the Sultanate of Delhi was a Medieval India, late medieval empire primarily based in Delhi that stretched over large parts of the Indian subcontinent for more than three centuries. 's ''
iqta'' system revitalized north Indian economy and helped India become "the hub of world trade". Eaton questions the thesis on ''iqta'' and its impact on Indian economy, adding that Wink provides a wealth of information on the topic. According to Eaton, the
numismatic
Numismatics is the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, medals, and related objects.
Specialists, known as numismatists, are often characterized as students or collectors of coins, but the discipline also inclu ...
evidence shows that the Indian economy was already highly monetized before the Turkic conquests. There are other difficulties in the book, states Eaton, such as how the quotations and his sources are presented. Eaton criticizes Wink's "juxtaposing works composed hundreds of years apart from each other without contextualizing them". Setting aside such difficulties, Eaton states that Volume 2 provides important and provocative new interpretations, one that correctly sees "Indo-Islamic world as a world-historical process".
Volume 3
Peter Jackson found all the three volumes to be magisterial works and based on impressive secondary literature.
Richard Eaton's review of the 3rd volume of ''Al-Hind'' states that it is a "survey of the 14th and 15th century Indian Ocean region through the lens of geography". It presents the Indo-Islamic developments over this period as a "fusion" of the nomadic central Asian culture with settled agrarian north Indian culture, thus creating post-nomadic empires of
Ghurids and
Khaljis. Eaton calls this an elegant scheme, if somewhat awkward. It covers the
Habshi slaves and
mercenaries
A mercenary is a private individual who joins an War, armed conflict for personal profit, is otherwise an outsider to the conflict, and is not a member of any other official military. Mercenaries fight for money or other forms of payment rath ...
from
East Africa
East Africa, also known as Eastern Africa or the East of Africa, is a region at the eastern edge of the Africa, African continent, distinguished by its unique geographical, historical, and cultural landscape. Defined in varying scopes, the regi ...
brought into India for military campaigns in Bengal,
Gujarat
Gujarat () is a States of India, state along the Western India, western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the List of states and union territories ...
and the
Deccan
The Deccan is a plateau extending over an area of and occupies the majority of the Indian peninsula. It stretches from the Satpura and Vindhya Ranges in the north to the northern fringes of Tamil Nadu in the south. It is bound by the mount ...
, how capitals and major cities such as
Delhi
Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, but spread chiefly to the west, or beyond its Bank (geography ...
and
Devagiri were settled in the fringes of semi-arid zones as well as in the non-arid lower
Gangetic valley. Eaton questions Wink's theory and understanding of religion and religious conversion in
Malaysia
Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...
, Kashmir, eastern Bengal, and the Indonesian archipelago. After reviewing the book, states Eaton, "one feels the need to identify more precisely the mechanisms by which Muslim societies emerged from the fusion of these two geo-cultural worlds". Wink's suggestion that "threats, humiliation, destruction of temples" or "fusion" of nomadic-settled cultures, states Eaton, does not explain this. The Volume 3 may be judged by critics as 'sweeping geography-driven" scheme that does not give human agency the credit it deserves, states Eaton, yet it is innovative and provocative secondary work that is a "welcome relief from standard dynastic narratives" commonly published.
In his review,
Sanjay Subrahmanyam begins by stating that Wink's three volume project was a monumental task and skeptics had feared about how any scholar could hope to dominate this vast field covering a thousand-year span, given the uneven state of historiography and myriad sources.
He then observes that the first two volumes have their admirers but they did not entirely allay the fears.
The third volume, finds Subrahmanyam, was less
polemic
Polemic ( , ) is contentious rhetoric intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and to undermine the opposing position. The practice of such argumentation is called polemics, which are seen in arguments on controversial to ...
al than its predecessors but had a less clear thesis.
Also, Wink had a "persistent tendency" of using
anachronistic
An anachronism (from the Greek , 'against' and , 'time') is a chronological inconsistency in some arrangement, especially a juxtaposition of people, events, objects, language terms and customs from different time periods. The most common typ ...
sources, penned centuries after the events as against contemporary sources; his choice of using old non-critical translations was criticized, as well.
Overall, Subrahmanyam notes that the volume clearly demarcated the "thin line between boldness and intellectual courage on the one hand, and
chutzpah
Chutzpah ( - ) is the quality of audacity, for good or for bad. A close English equivalent is sometimes " hubris". The word derives from the Hebrew ' (), meaning "insolence", "cheek" or "audacity". Thus, the original Yiddish word has a strongly ...
that eventually becomes mere
hubris
Hubris (; ), or less frequently hybris (), is extreme or excessive pride or dangerous overconfidence and complacency, often in combination with (or synonymous with) arrogance.
Hubris, arrogance, and pretension are related to the need for vi ...
".
Major publications
* ''Land and Sovereignty in India: Agrarian Society and Politics under the Eighteenth-Century Maratha Svarajya'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986
* ''Al-Hind, the making of the Indo-Islamic world, volume I: Early medieval India and the expansion of Islam, 7th–11th centuries'', Leiden: Brill, 1990. – second edition 1991; third edition 1996; Oxford University Press, 1990,
* ''Al-Hind, the making of the Indo-Islamic World, volume II: The slave kings and the Islamic conquest, 11th–13th centuries'', Leiden: Brill, 1997; Oxford University Press 1999,
* "Akbar", Oneword Publication, 2008;
* ''Nomads in the sedentary world'' (editor along with Anatoly Michailovich Khazanov), Psychology Press, 2001;
* ''Al-Hind: the making of the Indo-Islamic world, volume III: Indo-Islamic society, 14th–15th centuries'', Leiden: Brill 2003, Oxford University Press 2009,
* "Post Nomadic Empires: From the Mongols to the Mughals", (edited by
Peter Fibiger Bang and
C.A. Bayly), Palgrave Macmillan UK 2011,
* "Sovereignty and universal dominion in South Asia", Sage Publications (journal), 2016
* ''The Making of the Indo-Islamic World c.700–1800 CE'', Cambridge University Press, 2020,
''The Making of the Indo-Islamic World'' reception and reviews
Roy S. Fischel believes Wink's work "offers a unique and significant contribution" to the discussion of the introduction of
Islam
Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...
to India.
However, he thinks that some of Wink's approaches have limitations. Namely, Wink's overuse of dichotomies that downplay the flexibility of some categories like "mobile" and "settled".
Furthermore, the broad scale of the book – covering over a millennium – and the rich detail Wink provides makes the book "not easily accessible" to audiences who are not already knowledgeable about the subject.
P. P. Barua disagrees, stating that ''Making of the Indo-Islamic World'' synthesizes a lot of Wink's prior works that makes it more accessible to a general audience and scholars.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wink, Andre
20th-century American educators
Living people
1953 births
20th-century American writers
Leiden University alumni